Yes, as a culture we spend an inordinate amount of time starring at pictures of Kim Kardashian and her fancy makeup. Get over it—photography’s remarkable ability to shape identities has
made it the leading vehicle for representing the famous. The J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, which currently features an exhibition of Herb Ritts’s images of the beautiful and famous, is
doubling down with another show called “Portraits of Renown: Photography and the Cult of Celebrity.” It’sinformative.